Monthly Archives: May 2011

We all know we can’t please everyone all the time. It’s something we learn in preschool – everybody won’t want to be your friend – and it’s such a simple fact it seems almost silly to write.

But if it’s such a well-accepted fact, why is it that when we come face-to-face again with it – in someone’s cold handshake or their attempts to keep us further than arm’s length away – why is it that the 100th time hurts just as much as the first day in play school?

I went to bed last night with my heart mulling on that question. Knowing there is nothing I can do to change people’s opinions, yet dearly wishing I could. Whimpering a little as I drifted off.

This morning, the first morning in a beautiful city nestled high up in Himalayan foothills, I awake to a fierce thunderstorm. Hail pounding on the tin roof makes it impossible to fall back asleep or even think straight. Thirty feet outside my door disappears into fog and driving rain. “God,” I gripe, “On the first morning I can really sleep in, was hail really necessary?”

He returns by singing.

He is jealous for me.Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree.Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.(from David Crowder’s How He Loves)

Suddenly it’s as if the hail is pounding into my body, the rain drenching me. It’s as if I can feel myself being assaulted by the relentless, furious love of a God who died for me. In whose grace I’m drowning.

And suddenly it doesn’t matter that so-and-so doesn’t like me. It still hurts, but it doesn’t matter. It won’t define me.

I’ve mentioned before on a couple of occasions that it seems advocacy or, more simply, “getting involved” has become a de-facto theme for this year. I seem to keep coming back to things encouraging us to get involved in the big issues of our day and making a difference.

A blog that consistently kicks me further in that direction is Rage Against the Minivan. A mother of four, two of whom are adopted, she does a great job of challenging her readers to get involved in orphan care. There are so many different levels of ways we can be involved in advocating or directly caring for children in tough situations. Check out a recent list of her suggestions at her post You Don’t Need to Adopt to Care for Orphans. I really appreciate the scope, thought and passion she puts into this information.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction…
James 1:27

Running. Faster and faster. Feet pounding in rhythm with my aching head. My sides are heaving; I need to stop and breathe, but I can’t. I won’t. Because if I stop, I might see the cuts on my feet. I’ll notice the pain and I’ll start limping. And if I start, when will I stop?

I’m trying desperately to ignore Your whispers, trying to keep going my own way, trying to ignore Your urging to pull up and step aside. Because I know I’ve messed up. And if I know, of course, You know. And if we talk, maybe You’ll want to talk about my anger at my friend’s breach of trust or my unresolved hurt over someone’s actions.

I don’t want to talk about it.

I know you won’t call me a failure. I know you won’t rub it in. But I’m doing that enough for both of us at the moment. If I stop and listen, will You shout louder than my own voice? Will You be mighty enough to overrule my accusing heart?

So it’s not really You I’m running from – I guess it’s myself. Like Adam & Eve, I’m hiding from my own nakedness as much as from Your holy presence.

How can You see me and still love me? In my head, I believe it because You said You love me. But in my heart? In my heart I stand in stark disbelief. I dislike myself at the moment; how can You have known it all and died for me?

People say failing isn’t something that we should despise, but that we should see it as a way to learn and move forward again. It’s true, but seems impossible at the moment.

The only way I don’t see this weeks’ failures as definitive of who I am is because You say something different. You say You’ve ordered my steps – even the ones that appear to be missteps. You say You’re working it all together to make me more like Jesus. You say none of it – not even death – defines me. Only Your love does that.